Putting things in a spoiler box is easy enough that the rule of thumb should be to use it whenever discussing any such plot point. As I’ve said before, around once a year, someone starts a thread titled “I finally got around to seeing Citizen Kane.” So there is no expiration date on spoilers. Otherwise, with RealityChuck’s six-month rule for example, that would only make sense if everyone who reads here watched every movie or TV show on a synchronized schedule. The way so many people watch things on DVD, well after their run, makes that rule selfish and inconsiderate.
Some things will always require spoilers: Citizen Kane, as I mentioned, Battlestar Galactica, etc. It’s only polite and requires minimal effort.
Some critics have argued that it’s a bit subtler than that. I can’t cite this, but we studied Citizen Kane extensively in the American Film course I had in college, and one of the essays we read pointed out that it may be significant that Kane’s personal symbol of his lost youth was an object. He didn’t say “Mother” on his death bed, he named his old favorite toy. Throughout the movie we see Kane destroying his relationships with other people. In his last years he’s living largely in isolation and focuses on building his collection of art and other valuable objects. His final word may suggest that he never really “got it”, that even in his last moments he didn’t recognize that he was unhappy because he’d cut himself off from others and not because he didn’t have a particular thing in his possession.
Then again, the end of the movie discourages the audience from attributing too much significance to Kane’s last word. “It wouldn’t have explained anything. I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. A missing piece.”
I agree that a spoiler shouldn’t completely… spoil… a film. If a film relies that extensively on a single gimmick, I’d just as soon not see it. But I also enjoy surprises, and I envy anyone who can watch Psycho without knowing beforehand that Marion dies early in the film and Norman’s mother was dead all along.I can watch it and appreciate the cinematography, the performances, the writing, the music, and other sundry elements, but I can never have the experience of enjoying all that plus the thrill of not knowing what will happen next, which means I’ve never experienced it as the creators intended.
Do you see what I did there? I used a spoiler box on plot information that 999 out of 1,000 readers will already know. It cost me minimal time and effort and doesn’t inconvenience those 999 one whit, but it gives the other 1 the option of reading it with no more effort than a point-and-click, or remaining unspoiled. I really don’t see the downside.
I wonder if those people who don’t see anything wrong with spoilers would see anything wrong with telling somebody that a surprise party was being planned in their honor, or revealing the contents of a Christmas package on the 23rd. I mean, if the party or the gift is any good, what difference does it make?
One last analogy, I promise: A good movie isn’t ruined by a cell phone going off in the middle of it. It’s still damned annoying and something that can be prevented with minimal effort and a dash of common courtesy.
*Ironically, I put the spoiler in a quote box, so fixing it took a little more time and effort than I anticipated, but not too much.
Ah, yes, I will gladly concede that in a situation like that, it makes sense not to name the movie outside the spoiler box. In general, though, I think it is not very logical.
Even if true (the evidence is shaky), this is a theory about the real-life inspiration for “Rosebud”. It tells us nothing about the significance of Rosebud within the context of the film because the end of the movie makes it clear that Rosebud was in fact Kane’s sled.
Not necessarily, Lamia. Just because the sled had Rosebud written on it, doesn’t mean that’s what he was thinking as he exited the mortal coil. I know when *my *time comes, I’m going to be thinking more about the women I’ve ridden than the sleds.
Agreed. The Sixth Sense was spoiled for me about four weeks after its release by an EW article that had nothing to do with the movie.:mad: What’s also irritating are those smug film critics who arrogantly think they’re doing you a favor by blurting out the plot twist or ending in their review. One local critic earned my undying enmity by giving away the ending to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in his review. I realize that it’s been 20 years and that wasn’t even the best Indiana Jones movie but that still galls me, dammit!.:mad::mad:
[NITPICK] Kane didn’t name his sled. “Rosebud” is obviously either the name of the company that made the sled or the name of that particular sled model.
Yes, it does. You are entitled to dislike the ending of Citizen Kane if you find it silly or unsatisfying, but Rosebud’s identity is not left open to interpretation. Welles didn’t have to reveal the answer to this mystery in the film, but he did. Regardless of what intimate nicknames Hearst may or may not have had for Marion Davies, within the context of the movie Rosebud was quite clearly the name of the sled that Kane left behind as a boy.
What suspense in The Crying Game? That’s just a plot twist.
And knowing the plot does not ruin the suspense. Suspense depends on the audience knowing what’s going on – usually when the characters do not.
Let me tell you a story. Back in the early 70s, I happened to have some time to kill and picked up a book about Alfred Hitchcock. The book had a shot-by-shot breakdown of the crop dusting scene in North by Northwest, which I hadn’t seen. I figured I wouldn’t be seeing it any time soon, so I read the article, looking at each shot and reading the commentary.
A half hour later, I returned home and turned on the TV. You guessed – it was North by Northwest. And it was the crop dusting scene.
Despite not an hour before, I had read an analysis of every shot in the scene and knew exactly what was going to happen, I was still on the edge of my seat.
That’s suspense.
Now, mystery is another matter. But even then, I enjoyed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd a lot, even though I knew who the killer was before I picked it up.
I am pretty cautious about spoiler usage. Years ago I mentioned, in passing, the winner of the World Series of Poker that year. This was months after the event and at the time, although I had little interest in poker, I knew all about it. He was the first nobody winner who got in through a $39 online satellite and the story was all over the regular media. The idea that anyone interested in poker would not know he won was like expecting a football fan to not know, in August, that the Steelers beat the Cardinals.
However some poster jumped in to abuse me because the WSOP had not yet been shown on US TV and he had somehow kept from learning who won.
Honestly, I found (the stuff you talk about in the spoiler box) completely irrelevant to what I took from that movie, and if I were spoiled I don’t think it would have even registered to me as being spoiled. It just wouldn’t have occured to me that the big surprise was meaningful. (As is, it’s just kinda stupid and cloying.)
I disgaree completely. I think the spoilers / twists are the absolute least entertaining part of M. Night’s films. His films have fantastic tone or mood or setting or however you want to say it, but the plot and dialogue range from bad to terrible. Having one of his films spoiled is saying you watch his movies for the plot. That’s like watching the original Adam West Batman for the gritty reality. (I love M. Night movies.)
I don’t much care about spoilers, though occasionally I try to avoid spoilers about a specific project. But I wouldn’t care at all about having a surprise party spoiled or knowing beforehand what a Christmas present was.
This is tough to refute. I would say a cell phone going off or obnoxious teens talking over the picture would detract from the experience, and you could easily counter than foreknowledge detracts from the experience the director intended. I think they’re two different experiences, though. One is the ability to physically perceive the film. (This is why I virtually never go to the theater.) The other is, to my mind, a disruption of the suspension of disbelief. My propensity for suspension of disbelief knows no bounds, so I am all but immune to spoilers. But if loud surroundings make the movie hard to hear…GAH!!!
